Retailers: Vista is not the success Microsoft sees it as

People are going to use Windows and they are going to use other Microsoft products, it’s just one of the facts we all accept when we are born. That does not mean we have to accept any data that comes out of Redmond. Microsoft claims that Vista is the best selling OS since the beginning of time. Retailers and analysts don’t see it as a success at all. More likely than not, it’s somewhere in between.

Bill Gates says that 40 million copies of Vista were sold in the first 100 days after it released. That does not sound very probable to me, Microsoft could spin the numbers any way it wants to look good on paper and that?s probably what has been done.

Some of those copies were no doubt sold to OEMs which were loaded onto computers but probably were not sold at the time and may still be sitting in boxes, on shelves and waiting for a new owner. It?s also likely that the 40 million figure includes those copies of Vista that were part of the “Express Upgrade” program.

If you haven’t received your “Express Upgrade” to Vista by now, you probably aren?t going to get it.

Several resellers were polled by The Channel Guide to see if Vista was indeed selling all that well. It’s not, not by a long shot. Almost every customer wants to wait at least until SP1 rolls around and then a reassessment will be performed.

Mike Healey, representing Greenpages Technology Solutions said, “We have had no large scale deployments at this time, but approximately 15%-20% of our base has ordered or piloted a small configuration of Vista through us.”

One of the overwhelming issues in upgrading to Vista is the requirement for a mid to high-level graphics card and many business machines simply couldn’t run Vista well. Vista also does best with 2GB of memory, most business computers in circulation are lucky to have 1GB.

There are other outstanding issues with Vista such as lack of support for older hardware, which is not entirely Microsoft’s fault. Some manufacturers are just leaving the past in the past and are moving forward. Almost all new printers, scanners, cameras and other peripherals are Vista compatible if you buy the latest, newest model, today.

The law of the land is people are going to wait, Microsoft wants to shove Vista down our throats and present us with false or fudged data that says Vista is great, Vista is good; don?t listen to the third party reports. But, people are listening and if Microsoft delays Vista SP1 any longer than 2008, I believe it will hurt the company, to what extent, remains to be seen.

• Microsoft perseverance sees Zune HD a sold-out success
• Retailers: Microsoft should have never released Vista Basic
• Ballmer says Microsoft will struggle to top Vista’s success
• Demand for Windows Vista PCs overwhelms retailers
• Latest Vista sales figures disappoint but Office a success